1. Technical Field
This invention relates in general to telecommunications and, more particularly, to devices for providing enhanced services.
2. Description of the Related Art
The features provided by telecommunications over the last decade has been rapidly increasing. While in past years the telephone network was solely dedicated to providing connections between phones, today's telephone network provides many enhanced services to facilitate communications. Such features include voice mail, call forwarding, caller ID, fax on demand, voice response services and many others.
The ability to provide enhanced features has come largely from the emergence of AIN (Advanced Intelligent Network). In order to connect to the AIN, intelligent AIN-compatible switches are used.
While there is significant enthusiasm to provide the enhanced features supported by the AIN, the cost of providing these features can be prohibitive, since telephone service providers have a significant investment in older, non-AIN compatible switches. These switches mainly set up and tear down phone calls and do not support connection to the AIN.
Accordingly, the need has arisen for a technology to provide enhanced services in conjunction with existing non-AIN compatible switches.